Apple’s allowing wider – and free – access to its iOS development tools at long last.

Prior to this, Apple required users to pay US$99/year to become a member of Apple’s Developer Program in order to run code on physical iPhone and iPads. As part of the new Developer Program, this is no longer required. Apps can be tested on devices, no purchase necessary.

While this technically means that developers will be able to release apps outside of the App Store, testing it on their own devices and thus avoiding the App Store completely.

While apps could be run from unknown sources, also known as “sideloading”, this would still require a physical connection and a Mac running Xcode to build the apps.

With the new policy change, customers can theoretically download the application code from the open-source tree and build it locally. Then, they can use Xcode to run it on their device.

With this change, users would really only need to pay for the Developer Program if they wanted to actually submit to the App Store. To submit apps through iTunes Connect to Apple for review, a paid active membership is still required. Apple says it dropped the fee to allow even more budding developers to join in the iOS world as many people who were deterred by the US$99 subscription fee.

There’s never been a better time to code for iOS, so if you’ve been looking to download the development tools and begin a project, head on over to developer.apple.com and take a gander.